Bela Fleck
SFJazz Center
San Francisco, CA
May 17, 2013

Bela Fleck - solo acoustic banjo and *cello banjo

first set:
1. (emcee intro) 02:58
2. "great honor to introduce" 01:07
3. (Bela speaks) 00:14
4. ? 07:48
5. ? 02:21
6. ? 04:04
7. from Banjo Concerto 04:33
8. (spoken intro to John Hartford medley) 06:12
9. (John Hartford medley) 06:09
10. ?* 02:36
11. ?* 01:41
12. ?* 04:44
13. ?* 08:59
TRT 53:33

second set:
1. (coming onstage) 00:30
2. ? 06:42
3. ? 03:57
4. (Bach?) 06:04
5. Shanti* 05:01
6. "the most embarrassing evening I've ever had in my life" 04:54
7. Star Spangled Banner 05:09
8. (spoken intro to Earl Scruggs medley) 02:14
9. (Earl Scruggs medley) 06:57
10. (Beatles/Lennon medley) 13:19
11. ("a little parlor trick") 04:46
TRT 59:37

I'd love to see this torrent banned, but only for the reason that it someday has become an official release. They did indicate that it was being recorded; four nights in a row of solo acoustic banjo Bela played! Bliss! Until it does get officially released though here is one evening of it.

Huge thanks to my buddy DS, a longtime taper who wasn't rolling that night, who insisted that I swap tickets with him so I could be in second row direct center rather than in third row 4 seats off center - that one-row-four-seat difference did get us a better recording.

When Bela first comes onstage he says he's dedicating the night show to one person in the audience and points to the one empty seat in the front row. After the first song the ticketholder for that seat finally arrived, with difficulty, using his cane; crowd and Bela reactions ensue.

During his preface to his John Hartford medley, Bela recommends Steam Powered Aereo-Plane as a good introduction to Hartford's music. That and Morning Bugle, both long-out-of-print cds, have finally been reissued as a 2-in-1 cd: http://johnhartford.com/store.cfm?nv=0901J242608040441

SFJazz Center opened in Jan. 2013. Highlights of the opening concert were broadcast. FM has been seeded here: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=438396 and is streaming online at http://www.npr.org/event/music/169066093/live-from-sfjazz-center-opening

Sitting in the second row the speakers were 25-30' directly above my head, not pointing at me but over my head. The hall has just been built with much care to acoustic design but I wasn't recording what was coming out of the house sound system, I was hearing and recording what was coming from Bela's banjo to my mics, which were 10-12' away from the banjo head. When he spoke into a mic the sound went over my head, when he spoke without the mic and facing me my mics picked it up much better (eg. 2nd set, track 6, from 1:14 to 1:19) The sound of one lone acoustic banjo is not very loud* compared to many other types of music and I had the gain up considerably from my typical settings, which is good but also unfortunate in that I picked up my moving noises etc better too. Nevertheless you might like how this sounds on headphones.

stealth audience recording by Easy Ed from 2nd row direct center (about 10-12 feet from Bela)
Beyerdynamic CK930s (A-B configuration just above ear height) > Naiant Tinybox > Sony PCM-M10 (24 bit, 44.1k)
Soundforge 10 (graphic fades to reduce applause by 9db, track, normalize, convert to 16 bit [iZotope MBIT+ basic2 clear 1 bit dither], export tracks to .wav files) > Trader's Little Helper (level 8 encoding, align on sector boundaries) > flacs, ffp, md5 files

*when I first got a banjo and began to practice, I took off the resonator, put clothes-pins on the bridge, stuffed a pillow inside the back and of course shut the door but for some reason it still bothered my wife- can you imagine?